April 29, 2008

Nicole and I spent our last morning together running some errands, having breakfast and stopping by 2 more fabric stores. All good things must come to an end, right? She drove me up to San Jose, where I'd planned to meet another imaginary friend, Rani, who I have "known" and been friends with for 12 years, but we've never met! It was such a hoot to finally meet her, someone I feel so connected with. She was even sweeter and cuter in person than I had imagined from the pictures I had seen. After a much-too-short vist, Rani dropped me off at the airport and I had a very uneventful flight home.

I was happy to see the kids, very happy. And I had missed 8-10 inches of late April snow while I was gone, so that was quite surprising and very good timing, it seems!

I finished the quilt I started at the retreat, the pictures here aren't great but this thing is MASSIVE, so it was hard to fit it all in! It's made with just one Moda Layer Cake (I used Simplicity) along with some background and border fabrics. It took me only 4 days of sewing (and a couple of those days I only managed an hour or two). A very fast quilt indeed! It finishes 85x85, although I trimmed the pinked edges off my squares, so mine is about 83x83. Fun, huh? How cute would this be with the Fresh Squeezed fabrics or Maypole? The pattern is called Star Cakes and I got it here.

April 28, 2008

On Monday morning, Nicole and I took a drive down to beautiful Pacific Grove. Our most immediate destination was Back Porch Fabrics, but we saw some other beautiful things while we were there as well. Here are the beautiful batiks I bought at Back Porch. Orange again, what a surprise! but their orange and pink selection just knocked me over. There's a great quilt in the Batik Beauties book with a striped, mitered border, and I found the perfect stripe for mine.

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After shopping, we blazed down Highway 1 to see as many things as we could in our last full day together and, indeed, we saw some very pretty sights. This beautiful bed and breakfast is the Seven Gables Inn, with rooms starting at just $200 a night - not too bad for such a beautiful setting, wouldn't you agree?

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Look at this beautiful carpet of purply goodness - it's called ice plant, and I've never seen anything quite like it.

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We continued our drive down the coast, looking at all the beautiful homes and stopping once or twice to try and get a picture of the waves crashing to the shore.

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We had the most delicious lunch at Roy's at the Inn at Spanish Bay, Pebble Beach. I had the Bento Box and tried sashimi for the first time. It was melt-in-your mouth delicious.

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Nicole posed for a picture next to the beautiful tropical flowers in the hotel lobby.

But back in the car, we had more sightseeing to do. We swung by the Mission Ranch for a view of the property. Stopped briefly at the Carmel Mission, visited some friends of Nicole's at a cute little home decor shop, and then up to the Carmel Ranch where Nicole interviewed recently (beautiful place), then home to Ozzie.

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Ozzie ran into the guest bedroom and nabbed a bottle of Benedryl from my tote bag. We both chased him all around the yard to retrieve the bottle. Ozzie clearly thought it was a fun game. The bottle had some puncture wounds, but fortunately, Ozzie didn't get to the contents.

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Then Ozzie hung out while we laid out the batiks from our earlier shopping trip. I think he liked Nicole's pile the best.

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Here is the hostess gift I left for Nicole - I asked Nicole Ellison to make an Annie (actually a Nettie) doll using a fabric that Nicole and I have a running joke about. The doll was adorable and I hope Nicole enjoys having her as a memory of my visit. I know Ozzie wanted so badly to get Nettie as I was trying to take her picture. Keep her on a high shelf, Nicole!

April 26, 2008

Sunday morning, we woke up and started packing up our work and sleeping areas. We weren't obligated to leave until 3 p.m., but I was at a good stopping place with my quilt (half finished!!) and Nicole still wasn't feeling up to snuff, so we planned to leave a little earlier. Plus - we had shopping to do!

We planned a trip to Concord to visit Thimblecreek, so Nicole and I led Connie to the quilt store. It's in an industrial park - you'd never guess something so fabulous was inside that building, but there it was! They had so many beautiful fabrics and amazing kits. I was very, very tempted to buy one of everything, but showed great restraint, I think. I bought some of this chocolate brown fabric to make this quilt using Dandelion Girl fabrics that I already have with the brown for the alternate blocks and border flying geese.

One thing I couldn't leave without is this beautiful wool appliqued quilt block. I am going to frame it for my sewing room. I know I will take a razzing from my quilt buddies at home because I adamently insist that I don't like basket blocks. But orange sunflowers, who could resist? Even Nicole commented that I didn't like baskets when I excitedly showed the block to her. Maybe a leopard *can* change her spots?

After leaving Concord, we drove down to Palo Alto for the big Shyne family Sunday dinner. I must admit - shy me was seriously fretting meeting this big group of people, but they couldn't have been more warm and welcoming. I finally got to meet Andrea (white blouse), who I felt like I already knew, and the charming Sara (far left), her hubby Ryan and their dear sweet puffball Remy, as well as many of their other relatives including their beautiful cousin Claudia pictured with us here. What a fun family - can y'all adopt me? I always wanted sisters - my parents selfishly never came through for me.

After a scrumptious dinner of chicken with goat cheese and bow-tie pasta salad from the Barefoot Contessa's recipe book, prepared for us by sisters Trish and Andrea, we visited a little while after dinner, then made the drive down to Salinas where Ozzie was clearly missing his Mommy, and Dennis had two perfect Cosmos waiting for us. Nicole was still feeling punky, so I had to be a proper houseguest and drink her Cosmo, too. Couldn't let it go to waste, could I? Dennis and Nicole will probably never have me back, I hope I didn't launch into any really raunchy jokes or say anything else too inappropriate!

April 25, 2008

I won't duplicate any of the photos that Nicole posted on her blog, so here are a few that she did not show. First up, we have Diana's beautiful show and tell of a paper pieced New York Beauty made with these beautiful Kaffe Fasset fabrics. These fabrics are so totally out of my comfort zone, but stay tuned and you'll see how I really warmed up to them! Diana was also working on a beautiful batik quilt that was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. I was really partial to the straight setting that she originally had up on the design wall. I'm anxious to see how she decides to make the rows in the end - it seems the diagonal set was the crowd favorite.

This is Kate's project from last year's retreat (is that right, Kate?). Look how beautiful and summery this quilt looks. Just lovely!

Here we are playing a game called Left Center Right. We had the rules all wrong, but it was still fun anyway. We had a lot of laughs.

Saturday we went down into Danville for a field trip to the quilt store and for lunch. Poor Nicole got so sick and had to be taken back to her bed. I'm not sure how we managed to have fun without her, but there was fabric involved here - I am easily distracted. Here is my new friend, Isabel, with the batiks we were picking out to play another round of Left Center Right on Saturday night.

Remember how I said earlier that Kaffe Fassett fabrics weren't for me? Well the Quilter's Inn in Danville had this fabulous quilt on display in the shop and I fell head over heels for it. They had a kit in a lighter color combination, but I really loved this one. I asked if they had any more kits and even though they were swamped with customers, they offered to build me a kit, if I could just come back closer to closing time. Could I ever! Isn't this just beautiful? The ragged edge machine applique seems like it will be very fun to do and who cares about precision???

April 23, 2008

I had the most amazing time in California. Nicole and her charming husband Dennis were such delightful hosts and Nicole showed me fabulous fabric stores. I lost count, but she listed 11 on her blog and that sounds about right. They all had something fun and unique that I had not seen in my area, or it was too good of a score to pass up - like Natural Expressions in Los Gatos that had a wall of fabric for $2 a yard. I pored over those bolts to see how many quilts I could think of that needed backing. I could only think of 3, but to get 3 quilt backs for $36 is unheard of! Some of the other shops were just wonderful too, but I was a good girl and didn't buy from EVERY SINGLE SHOP, I promise!

I didn't remember to get photos at all the shops, but here are a couple of highlights. The photo above was at In Between Stitches in Livermore. I just loved that applique quilt in their classroom.

I fell in love with this adorable quilt made of the Mary Engelbreit fabrics. It's their block of the month that just started in April, so I signed up to do it by mail. I was able to pick up the first block while I was there. I love these ME fabrics, but hadn't thought of anything wonderful to do with them yet. I think this is just the perfect project for them. I can't wait to get started!

We were ever so slightly late (ahem - 2-1/2 hours) getting to San Damiano because of our fabric shop hop the traffic (we just couldn't miss In Between Stitches!!)

We finally arrived at the retreat center and unpacked the car and set up to sew just about the time the dinner bell rang. Nicole cautioned me that the food was pretty bland, but we had delicious fresh tasting salmon with pesto sauce and wild rice and I found it to be very tasty.

After dinner we spent some time sewing, although I think I was the first to crash because my day had started at 3:30 a.m. Tune in again tomorrow and I will tell you about our second day.

April 22, 2008

Please visit Perry's blog for details about donating to help funding Cystic Fibrosis research for her beautiful granddaughter, Katy. Give generously! Oh and you might just win a beautiful quilt too - icing on the cake! Our friend Cindy made this beautiful quilt and who wouldn't want to win this gorgeous thing?

April 17, 2008

My blurry photo? Not so much. But you get the idea. This is the best I could do, standing on a ladder - I didn't think they would hang this so high, and I wish I could get up there and steam out the wrinkles, but what can you do.

I'm leaving in a matter of minutes to the airport and will be hugging Nicole in a few hours. A full debriefing when I return on Wednesday!

April 16, 2008

Only 2 more sleeps until I leave for California! I am so excited, I can hardly stand it! The Zzzzzzs are also for the most boring blog ever - mine! I have my current project packed, so there is no sewing happening at Chez Stashmaster. I hope to take lots of pictures and have lots to share when I return from my trip. Or perhaps they will have my Swell quilt hung up at the shop tomorrow and I can post a picture of that before I go. Until then.....

April 11, 2008

I finally finished the Swell Moda U quilt for the shop and dropped it off yesterday. A customer asked to buy a kit while I was showing it to the gals, which made me very happy. I love when my shop models sell kits! I will get a picture once it's hung in the shop, hopefully it will be up when I work on Sunday.

It does not have rick rack after all. My fourth order arrived and was not acceptable to me, so I decided to leave it off. I would have had the quilt finished 2 weeks ago if I had made that decision sooner, but oh well. Maybe I will find the right rick rack and stitch it on after it is machine quilted.

Next Friday I leave for San Jose to go to a quilt retreat with my BFF Nicole and her friends. I am so excited to see her again and this will be my very first visit to California!

April 7, 2008

Wow, it seems like only yesterday that these two little munchkins were sharing a bassinet in the hospital, now they are big boys - 11 years old! Where does the time go? Happy birthday to my 2 sweet boys.

April 5, 2008

My lovely assistant helped me pull a name out of the ol' shoe box (hey - I didn't have a hat!) and the winner is - Simply Libby! Thanks to everyone for playing along, and Libby, please email me to claim your prize!

April 2, 2008

I still haven't been able to finish the Swell Moda U quilt for the shop sample. I ran out of the first rick rack, even though I bought an extra yard. I ordered a replacement from a different shop, hoping I would get it sooner than I got my first order. Yes, I got it right away, but it was smaller, thinner, and too "pink." So I went back to shop #1 and ended up ordering GIANT rick rack instead of jumbo. Oh.My.Word. I don't want the trim to overwhelm the quilt! So I had to place a fourth order last night. If this one is wrong, I think I may have to open a web site just to sell off my excess rick rack. What do you think? And yes, I am a former blonde. ;-)

In other quilty news, I finally got all 12 Web Sampler blocks and also received a finishing kit from a different shop. I am finally getting my "will to sew" back, and made 2 more blocks. I'm still progressing at a snail's pace, but I *am* progressing!

I also finished all the churn dash blocks and cut out all the setting blocks for my Peppermint Twist quilt from the Jo Morton class I took last summer. I am terrified of the applique, but poised to give it a shot. Stay tuned.